Dr. James Gibb will discuss burials in cemeteries.
How we treat the remains of deceased family and friends says much about us and the society we have created. Patterns of burials in cemeteries and the means by which we mark graves reveals aspects of the past that may not be recoverable through more conventional forms of historical research. This illustrated presentation provides examples of what we have learned through archaeological investigation of cemeteries throughout the region, from simple mapping and archival research of a 19th/20th-century Irish Catholic cemetery in Baltimore City, to analysis of excavated human remains from a 17th-century family cemetery in Calvert County.